286 PHYSICAL GEOGEAPHY OF THE SEA, AND ITS METEOROLOGY 



ginning to lay clown more moisture tlian they take up again. In 

 the Obi, the Yenesi, and the Lena is to be found the volume 

 that indicates the load of water which these winds have brought 

 from the southern hemisphere, from the Mediterranean, and the 

 Eed Sea; for m these almost hyperborean river-basins do we 

 find the first instance in which, throughout the entire range 

 assigTied these mnds, they have, after supphdng the Amazon, etc., 

 left more water beliind them than they have taken up again and 

 carried ofi". The low temperatures of Siberian Asia are quite 

 sufficient to extract from these "winds the remnants of vapom- which 

 the cool mountain-tops and mighty rivers of the southern hemisphere 

 have left in them. 



549. Here I may be permitted to pause, that I may call atten- 

 How climates in one tiou to auothor remarkable coincidence, and admire 

 upSffh^e'^Sm'ifge-'^ the uiarks of design, the beautiful and exquisite ad- 

 ment of land in the jnstments that WO liero see pro^dded, to insure the 



other, and upon the «^ i • p i t 



course of the winds, perfect workmgs 01 the great aqueous and atmo- 

 spherical machine. This coincidence — may I not call it cause and 

 effect ? — is between the hygrometrical conditions of all the coim- 

 tries within, and the hygrometrical conditions of all the countries 

 ^vithout, the range included mthin the lines which I have drawQ 

 (Plate YII.) to represent the route in the northern hemisphere of 

 the south-east trpxle winds after they have blown then' coui'se over 

 the land in South Africa and America. Both to the right and left 

 of this range are coimtries included between the same parallels 

 in which it is, yet these countries all receive more water from 

 the atmosphere than they give back to it again; they all have 

 rivers rimning into the sea. On the one hand, there is in Em^ope 

 the Ehine, the Elbe, and all the great rivers that empty into the 

 Atlantic ; on the other hand, there are in Asia the Ganges, and all 

 the great Chinese rivers ; and in North America, in the latitude of 

 the Caspian Sea, is our great system of fresh-water lakes ; all of 

 these receive from the atmosphere immense volumes of water, and 

 pour it back into the sea in streams the most majestic. It is 

 remarkable that none of these copiously-supplied water-sheds have 

 to the south-west of them in the trade-^vind regions of the southern 

 hemisphere, any considerable body of land ; they are, all of them, 

 under the lee of evaporating sm-faces in the trade-^iad regions of 

 the south. Only those countries in the extra-tropical north which 

 I have described as hiag under the lee of trade-TS^d South America 

 and Africa are scantily supplied with rains. Pray examine Plate 



